Dispossession

“Read Dispossession. It’s a riveting and timely account of the deleterious legacy of slavery. And despite the national interest in civil rights, not much competes with Dispossession.” — Huffington Post

“Daniel’s Dispossession is provocative, beautifully crafted, and a fitting continuation of his tremendous contribution to our understanding of the fundamental changes in the United States’ agricultural systems during the twentieth century.” — Journal of American History

“Soberingly revealing the dark underside of an era hailed for black success against racism, Daniel’s work exposes sickening, irreparable, racist destruction that compels reconception of popular memories of a generation of civil rights victories. This book belongs in any serious collection on U.S. civil rights, federal farm policy, or 20th-century America.” — Library Journal

“Likely to stimulate renewed scholarly interest in 20th-century agricultural history, this fine book belongs in every academic library. Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.” — CHOICE

“Southern farmers struggled to keep up with changes in technology and policy, economics and politics, labor relations and out-migration. African American farmers bore the additional burden of crippling discrimination. . . . With customary passion, Pete Daniel methodically demonstrates that the USDA bears much of the blame. Dispossession catalogs decades of locally administered and federally sanctioned racism that permeated this powerful government agency’s activities within the South.” — North Carolina Historical Review

“The critical exposure of discrimination at all levels of government is both informative and provocative and is a welcome addition to the historiographical conversation.” — H-1960s

“An essential contribution to the rural history of the civil rights movement and to the growing history of black farm ownership.” — Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“This thoroughly researched and clearly written account of USDA discrimination against black farmers merits reading by anyone interested in agricultural and southern history.” — American Historical Review

“Daniel tells a fascinating, in many ways surprising, but completely infuriating story. His archival research is creative and impeccable.” — Law and History Review

“Daniel’s rich description of the people and processes that blocked black farmers’ access to the resources they needed to stay on the land is an essential guide for scholars seeking to understand post-1960s developments and persistent racial inequality in the twenty-first century.” — Journal of Southern History